Talk:Fallen Angel - FS (7), SL (10), BG (7), F (6)
Alright, I'm going to point out a few things, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way. As far as builds go, this is fundamentally a Divine Storm Soul that ditched Epic Divine Might and funnelled all his points to Str/Great Str instead. Along the way it chooses to boost +1 to BAB, at the expense of caster and spell levels, to the extent that it does not have level 9 spells. I suggest you take a look at the Divine Storm Soul, and adapt that by leaving Cha at 19, dropping EDM, and boosting strength to 24, because the loss of so many spells in exchange for 1 BAB generally is not worthwhile You might also want to note somewhere that this build gets hit by a multiclass penalty, between levels 24-28. JeminiZero 14:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC) :I may lose level 9 and even 8 spells, but since the build is melee oriented and my spell DC is abyssmal, I only care for buff spells, right? Now, the only spell I would consider a worthy buff in the 8-9 spell levels is Aura versus Alignment (*girly giggle* Undeath's Eternal Foe! *snicker*), and I can live without it, although Energy Drain is nice to reduce AB. :Admittedly, I'm losing additional Mantles and Extended buffs I could've gotten with metamagic feats and level 9 spells, but what I have should easily last long enough for a quick sweep through a Battle of the Dragons-style mod. :See, the Divine Storm Soul's advantage over the Fallen Angel is that its buffs last longer, but the latter has more HP and, more importantly, considerably higher AB. While the Divine Storm Soul may deal much more damage with its Epic Divine Might, if Battle of the Builds taught me anything, it's that hitting at all is more important than hitting hard. :Dark Eternal 18:02, 4 April 2008 (UTC) ::To make the flow of the discussion clearer, I have indented your text (add colons ":" to the front of a paragraph you want to indent). More to the topic, level 9 spells let you cast persistant Prayer and Vigor/Mass Lesser Vigor. Vigor won't matter nearly as much in BotB as you already have regeneration gear, but in low magic settings, it saves a lot of healing spells. Level 9 spells also qualify you for Epic spells. ::As for learning stuff from BoTB, keep in mind that BoTB is a very specialized arena, where you are facing monsters with maxed out AC and whatnot. Most Enemies in campaigns won't have anywhere near this kind of AC. In fact most campaigns/modules don't reach such high level, but that's beside the point. ::For hitting and landing damage, hitting at all won't do you much good if the opponents have more damage reduction, than you have damage. Its just that in pumping Strength, you increase damage at the same time. I reckon with 30 +8 Str, and a +8 +3 Stormlord spear, and +2 Weapon specialization Spear, you are doing about 27 + 1d8 per hit, of which 15 will be absorbed by the Iron Body DR. So thats a net of 12 + 1d8 or an average of 16.5 damage per hit. (If you found you were doing more damage in BoTB, check what fraction of the damage is elemental. We recently figured out the Energy Immunity buffs were buggy. And once that's fixed none of the elemental damage should be getting through) ::Suggestions for the DSS have been moved to the DSS talk page, and will be answered there. But I'll say this much-the DSS advantage over this build is not merely longer buffs and higher EDM damage. The DSS is also more "rounded". He was primarily built for campaigns, rather than as a BoTB pit fighter. As such he has no multiclass penalty, and has skill points for convo skill. Really then, comparing this build with the DSS is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. ::JeminiZero 12:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC) :Dude, if you've reached level 9 cleric spells, the regeneration spells (except, heh, Regeneration) would be too weak by your standards, and shouldn't be worth wasting level 7-9 spells on. :Now, as to my opponents having more damage reduction than I deal damage. If that would truly be the case, and I'd be dealing 0 damage to them, I don't think Epic Divine Might would've saved me. Besides, it's actually those same users of Iron Body that proved my point. Even if I dealt twice as much damage to them, it won't matter a thing because until their buffs ran out, I could only hit them with a 20, which wasn't much help while they still had Bigbies. By the time I could hit them, they were virtually helpless, so my damage mattered little. :See, there are a plethora of builds in BotB, and every one of them that I could hit properly, I just lunged at, and it worked. If I couldn't hit them often enough, it would be because of buffs, in which case I'd have to stall, and - *gasp * - employ strategy. But having more damage wouldn't have changed anything in any of those battles, unless I had like +50 more. If I could hit it, I could kill it. Simple as that. :About comparing our builds. You're right. It's like comparing apples and oranges. :But - heh heh, I get the last word - you started. :Dark Eternal 11:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC) Re-read my previous comments. I didn't say your opponents *actually* had more damage reduction than you had damage, what I did say was that *if* that was the case hitting them at all won't do much good. I also said that by pumping Str, you amped up your damage at the same time. In BoTB, Damage does count. Your opponents typically have 16 points of regeneration per round, and to kill them you need to injure them faster than they regenerate. To get a clearer picture of this, try pitting the Halfling Ninja against the Thuggernaut. Both sides have so much defense compared to the opponents offense that they only periodically hit each other, and that damage is eventually regenerated. And neither are buff reliant, so matches between them can last many many minutes. Victory only occurs if one of them gets several lucky shots in a row. (Just ask Elysius, he ran out of patience trying to test that particular combination). JeminiZero 12:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC) :I know you didn't mean they actually had more damage reduction than I had damage. That's why I said it all in 'would' and 'I'd', because that's like hypothetical future. I'm sorry if it wasn't clear. :As to the damage. What I meant is, on the premise that you can hit them frequently, unless your damage is like, extremely, ridiculously, impossibly low, having higher damage won't matter much. That is, unless they can hit you frequently, too, which didn't happen to me much. When it did, I managed to solve that problem by using the shield and/or by having more HP and/or by dealing more damage. :And yeah. The Thuggernaut was tough. :Dark Eternal 14:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC) FS7/SL10/BG7/F6? Truly, I thought this was a joke build when I first read that. It's like it almost gets to where it gets the best stuff then doesn't bother taking it. It's one level from 9th level spells and two levels from EWF. You could drop three Blackguard levels - losing pretty much nothing in the process - ending up as FS8/SL10/BG4/F8, picking up 9th level spells and an epic weapon focus in spear. There's no good reason not to aim for EDM, either. The GWF/EWF would more than make up for the loss of AB from losing some strength to charisma. Syylk 05:20, 13 April 2009 (UTC)